Libya Gingerly Begins Seeking Economic but Not Political Reform

Businessmen outside a Visa International meeting this week in a hotel in Tripoli, Libya, under a portrait of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the system of government he instituted. There is much talk of economic, but not political, change. Credit
Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

TRIPOLI, Libya, March 1 — For more than three decades, Libya has been an experiment in one man’s ideology. The result is a country with few functioning institutions, an unreliable legal system, inadequate schools and hospitals, and a population isolated and unprepared for modernity.

That is the assessment of some of the government’s own consultants.

Yet the leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, will be holding a huge celebration on Friday to observe the 30th anniversary of the system that has led Libya to its current crisis. So as efforts to change get under way, pushed by a small group of reformers, talk is restricted to economic change.

The question on many people’s minds is how that can be carried out without political change as well.

“Do you think we can create social and economic prosperity without political reform?” Ahmed Shebani, a local businessman, asked at an economic conference last week.

The Libyan political system is centralized and decentralized. Colonel Qaddafi, called Brother Leader, says that representative democracy is a fraud and that each citizen must participate in the state. So there are 3,000 committees that meet twice a year. There is a 3,000-member council made up of the heads of those committees that assigns priorities and budgets. There are committees on health and finance, as well as local committees that coordinate the national committees.

Even though Libya is the wealthiest country in North Africa, roads often do not get paved, housing built or hospitals stocked. In fact, it is far behind its neighbors in almost everything related to human development, especially education, the government consultants say.

The government hired the Monitor Group, a consulting business based in Cambridge, Mass., to assess the economy and chart a path forward. Challenges were found in every sector.

The consultants are here as guests of the nascent reform movement, and they appeared at a conference last week organized by Colonel Qaddafi’s son Seif el-Islam el-Qaddafi, the main force behind the drive to retool the economy.

Photo

A butcher dragged a sheep on Saturday in front of his shop in Tripoli. A small group of Libyan reformers is pushing for economic change.Credit
Photographs by Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times

All stepped quietly around the question of true political reform.

“Look, we have all reached the conclusion that political change is impossible,” said a former political prisoner who like other dissidents here was afraid to be identified for fear of punishment. “It is impossible to change the system. So the only thing we can do is support the initiatives taken by someone like Seif and hope that it leads eventually to where we want things to go.”

It is hard to see how change can come quickly in such an undeveloped economy and in a system whose leaders have been resistant to change.

Officials here announced recently that they would eliminate 120,000 government jobs as part of a far-reaching effort to restructure the ailing economy. Then they announced that they were not immediately ending the jobs but would give people three years’ salary while they looked for work in a private sector that barely exists.

Officials pay homage to Colonel Qaddafi’s philosophy, which is embodied in his Green Book, a mélange of pop psychology, socialism, populism and Islam. “Most people don’t understand the system,” said Ahmed Ali Kojman, a director of Watassimo, Libya’s main charity group, run by Colonel Qaddafi’s daughter Aisha. “Those that do, understand it should be the democracy used all over the world.”

Since criticizing the system is a red line, even the outside consultants avoided doing so.

“We have to create a process of improving everything,” Prof. Michael Porter of Harvard, an expert on competitiveness who has helped plan economic reform efforts here, said carefully at the conference. “It won’t happen overnight. It will take years.”

Professor Porter added that the principles behind the Qaddafi philosophy were compatible with a competitive economy.

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Libya was once widely regarded as a rogue state, led by a man President Reagan described as a “mad dog.” It was accused of financing groups the United States deemed terrorists, and it was isolated from the world after its agents were accused of the bombing of a Pan Am jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

But Colonel Qaddafi has resolved his major differences with the West, given up the agents convicted in the bombing and given up his unconventional weapons programs.

The United Nations lifted its sanctions against Libya in 2003 and the United States resumed full diplomatic relations in 2004. Libya was pointed to as a model, proof that pressure, sanctions and international isolation could rein in a rogue. Some supporters of the current war in Iraq said Libya’s moves were evidence that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 had sent a chill through the region’s dictators and strongmen.

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Boys at play Tuesday in a low-income apartment complex in Tripoli. The text on the Qaddafi poster says, Glory to the creator of great victories.

But on the streets of Tripoli, it is also evident that Colonel Qaddafi and his inner circle have been persuaded to try to change at least as much by the same dynamic that has unnerved other leaders around the Middle East: the gravest threat to their control is economic distress.

In Libya, where more than half the population is under age 20, people say they want jobs and often ask how a country with so much oil wealth can be so poor. People here said they had believed that their troubles were a result of international sanctions. But the sanctions were lifted years ago, and people say they have not seen much improvement in their daily lives.

“In many ways, the economic initiatives being proposed are satisfying what people are looking for,” said Idris Mismari, who publishes a Libyan cultural digest in Egypt because it is banned in Libya. “So that allows everybody to ignore political reforms.”

But there is skepticism that the government will follow through on those promises. “The main problem the regime has is to build the trust of the people,” said Giumma Attigha, a lawyer who leads a human rights committee here. “There is a lack of credibility for the regime. When anything comes from the state, even if it is good, they think they are bluffing.”

Libya has been as isolated and cut off from the rest of the world as Albania was under its longtime Communist dictator, Enver Hoxha. Students continue to go to school in military fatigues and learn to assemble weapons in class. Time is almost irrelevant in Tripoli, so appointments are often skipped with no explanation. The streets are filled with pictures of Colonel Qaddafi, his fist in the air or his gaze turned toward the heavens.

“My mission is to incite the people to exercise authority without representation,” reads one of the Qaddafi slogans posted around town.

Consultants and officials say the biggest obstacle to development is the lack of adequately educated Libyans. A survey of the government managers, for example, found that only about 3 to 5 percent had any training in the last 20 years.

So far, the big changes, foreigners based here say, are the roughly 25 new ATMs in Tripoli. And Seif Qaddafi was allowed to create a new Economic Development Board.

But Libyans do say there has been social change. Not long ago, Western music was banned, studying English was banned, private property was banned, being a lawyer was banned and capitalism was a crime. Today they want to be part of the world. But they are afraid to leave the cocoon of a welfare state where everyone was poor but expectations were low.

“People are depressed and bewildered,” said Nassereddin Ali, 33, a playwright in Tripoli. “There is a fear of tomorrow and the future. People don’t know what to do: should they live for today, tomorrow or yesterday?”

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.

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